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Israeli Bombs, Gas Nearly Killed American Held By Hamas in Month Before Release

The father of Israeli-American IDF soldier Edan Alexander revealed that his son was nearly killed in an Israeli attack one month before Hamas released his son. The attack happened after Tel Aviv shut down the initial talks between Hamas and the Trump administration to ensure his release. 

According to an account by Alexander’s father, on April 14, Israel dropped multiple bombs above the tunnels where his son was held. The bombing created a toxic gas that nearly suffocated Edan to death. A second strike caused the tunnel he was in to collapse as he was fleeing the gas, nearly burying Alexander. 

In a statement from Edan relayed through his father, he explained how he was nearly killed by Israel. “I thought that was it, I’m dead. I managed to miraculously survive for a year and a half, but now it’s the end. I’m going to suffocate here in the tunnel,” he said. 

“We started to run away, and there was some kind of corridor — a very, very long corridor — I don’t know what was there on the other side, probably a connection to another route. We started running in that direction and then, suddenly, another bomb fell right above.” He added, “When the second bomb fell, and everything collapsed and we were buried underneath. It was the scariest moment of all time in captivity.”

Alexander is an American who was born in New Jersey. He enlisted in the IDF and was serving in a tank unit on October 7 when he was captured by Hamas. Alexander sustained injuries to his shoulder and hands during the Israeli attack that he is still recovering from. 

The date of the attack that nearly killed Alexander is notable as that same day, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said that Tel Aviv knew the location of the hostages and the operations would not endanger their lives. 

Additionally, the attack followed the initial push by the Trump administration to secure the release of Alexander, who was the only living American held by Hamas. In March, Trump’s Hostage Envoy Adam Bohler engaged in direct talks with Hamas on securing Alexander’s freedom. 

However, at that time, Tel Aviv lashed out at Bohler for attempting to make a deal and the talks ended. Early this month, the talks resumed when Hamas agreed to release Alexander as a unilateral show of good faith. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tel Aviv would not make any concessions to facilitate the release of Alexander. 

An official told The Times of Israel that Tel Aviv opposed Alexander’s release out of concern that Trump may lose interest in Gaza if there are no American hostages.

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The Rise And Fall Of The West’s Propaganda Regime

Propaganda used to control Western democracies is running headlong into searchable facts freely available on the internet. As a result, the powerful cannot maintain their self-sustaining narratives and are behaving erratically and defensively, like bees when their nest is disturbed.

Opposition leaders in France, Romania, and Brazil have been barred from elections. They were accused of spreading “disinformation” and then prosecuted for unrelated crimes. In the United States, the same lawfare was attempted against President Trump, but he won anyway.

Sun Tzu’s first principle of war is “know the enemy,” but knowledge is difficult in an information war. Propaganda plants lies in every soul. In 1928, the father of modern public relations, Edward Bernay (who also happened to be the nephew of Sigmund Freud), wrote in his book Propaganda:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Propaganda works by contrasting two sides. Empathy for an opponent’s position is systematically removed by control of information. Public policy filtered through propaganda is always a binary choice.

In wartime, “us versus them” in a “kill or be killed” conflict provides the necessary binary, and propaganda writes itself. Domestic propaganda in peacetime is a bit trickier but works the same way: by staking out two sides.

Mass media permits distinct information sources. Elections award one side or the other with temporary political rule, but power is never actually surrendered. Each side simply acts as a fulcrum for the other side to pivot. Wedge issues inject urgency, but they are designed to produce a stalemate.

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Star Harvard business professor stripped of tenure, fired for manipulating data in studies on dishonesty

A renowned Harvard University professor was stripped of her tenure and fired after an investigation found she fabricated data on multiple studies focused on dishonesty. 

Francesca Gino, a celebrated behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School, was let go after the school’s top governing board determined she tweaked observations in four studies so that their findings boosted her hypotheses, GHB reported.

Harvard administrators notified business faculty that Gino was out of a job in a closed-door meeting this past week, the outlet reported.

Harvard did not detail the professor’s firing or tenure being stripped — citing it as a personnel matter — but told GHB that the school had not revoked a professor’s tenure in decades.

No professors have had their tenure revoked at Harvard since the 1940s, when the American Association of University Professors formalized termination rules, according to The Harvard Crimson.

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California Senators Kill Bill To Create Psychedelic Therapy Pilot Program For Veterans And Former First Responders

A California Senate committee has declined to advance a bipartisan bill that would have created a psilocybin pilot program for military veterans and former first responders.

After moving through two other panels with unanimous support, the measure from Sens. Josh Becker (D) and Brian Jones (R) was shelved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Friday—with members declining to take it up or designate it as a two-year bill that could be revived later in the session.

The proposal as amended in a prior committee would have established a pilot program that would have been overseen by the University of California (UC) system. UC would have been requested to study and develop “psilocybin services” for eligible patients in up to five counties across the state in partnership with licensed clinics.

The universities would have been responsible for “protocol design, institutional review board approvals, training of psilocybin facilitators, data collection, and reporting” of the pilot program.

Under the legislation, the state would have also established a “Veterans and First Responders Research Pilot Special Fund,” with continuous appropriations to fund the work.

“Emerging research suggests that psilocybin and psilocyn, when used in a controlled setting, may offer significant benefits in treating mental health disorders, particularly those related to trauma and stress,” the bill’s findings section said.

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Ohio Is More Than Doubling The Amount Of Marijuana That Adults Can Legally Buy Per Day

Ohio adults will soon be able to buy more than double the amount of marijuana that they are currently allowed to purchase per day, with state officials determining that the market can sustainably supply both medical cannabis patients and adult consumers.

In a notice released last week, the Ohio Division of Cannabis Control (DCC) said that its priority “continues to be ensuring medical marijuana patients have adequate supply and maintain their medical marijuana card, and the Division knows that licensees share that priority.”

“Since non-medical cannabis sales began in August 2024, the market has demonstrated the ability to support both medical marijuana patients and non-medical consumers alike,” it said.

Accordingly, DCC said that, effective June 4, adults will be able to buy up to 2.5 ounces of flower cannabis per day, a significant increase compared to the current daily transaction limit of one ounce. This will make it so consumers could buy marijuana in an amount that matches the 2.5 ounce possession limit under state statute.

“At this time, when calculating 2.5 ounces of plant material, the only approved form that may be applied to the 2.5 ounces of cannabis plant material is dried cannabis plant material for vaporization,” the new notice says. “All other products apply towards the non-medical consumer’s cannabis product limitation of 15,000mg of total THC content.”

“Dispensaries are permitted to dispense in accordance with the statutory per day transaction limits but are not required to,” DCC said. “The Division reminds dispensaries of their responsibility…to serve and accommodate medical patients/caregivers and non-medical consumers alike, and maintain ongoing inventory sufficient to maintain an adequate supply of medical marijuana.”

The purchase limit for medical cannabis patients will not change under the updated guidance. Patients and caregivers can continue to buy up to a 90-day supply of marijuana for medical purposes.

If a retailer decides to raise its daily transaction limit for adult consumers in accordance with the guidance, the licensee must first submit a “Change of Operation” request to DCC.

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Only SCOTUS Can Rein In The Judicial Coup

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on May 15 on what has become a debilitating, critical crisis: the issuance of nationwide injunctions en masse by federal district court judges.

Notably, the overwhelming majority of those judges are Democrat appointees who seek to prevent President Donald Trump from doing what he was elected to do: govern. According to a lawsuit tracker by the Associated Press, more than 200 lawsuits have been filed against Trump’s executive orders.

In three consolidated cases from Washington, Maryland, and Massachusetts, federal district court judges issued nationwide injunctions (sometimes called universal injunctions or, to quote Justice Neil Gorsuch, “cosmic injunctions”) against the implementation of a Trump executive order ending universal birthright citizenship. The plaintiffs in those cases claim the order violates the 14th Amendment.

Those injunctions reflect a broader pattern. In less than four months, roughly 40 nationwide injunctions have been entered against the Trump administration — almost double the number entered during all four years of the Biden administration. As Solicitor General John Sauer pointed out, 35 have come “from the same five judicial districts.”

One could reasonably argue that the judges entering these orders are essentially attempting to undo the results of the last election by keeping in place Biden administration policies — policies that more than 77 million voters roundly rejected last November. These judges apparently believe they have more authority than the president to make decisions on everything from domestic and foreign policy to matters affecting national security and the military.

The Supreme Court should vigorously enforce its prior precedents (including its 1984 decision in U.S. v. Mendoza), which strictly limit the ability of a single unelected district court judge (of whom there are nearly 700) to keep the administration from achieving its policy objectives by ruling not just for those who filed a lawsuit but also for everyone who didn’t.

The court must also end the blatant judge-shopping and what amounts to a collective wholesale interference in the president’s constitutional authority as head of the executive branch.

The May 15 session was itself unusual — hopefully a sign that Chief Justice John Roberts finally recognizes the judicial crisis these lower court judges are causing. Typically, oral arguments end in April, and emergency requests for stays are usually decided on the pleadings without oral argument.

We have to wonder whether the chief justice was prompted to act in part by Justice Samuel Alito’s rather stinging March 5 dissent in Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (a dissent joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh).

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Boeing Deal With DOJ Proves That ‘Justice’ Is a Slippery Concept

Some seven years after Lion Air flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea in Indonesia shortly after take off, Boeing has made a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that will mean that the aircraft manufacturer will not face criminal prosecution for the crash that killed 189 people.

In court documents filed last Friday, Boeing agreed to a settlement of investment and compensation totaling $1.1 billion, some $445 million of which is to be paid to the families of the victims of both the Lion Air crash and the Ethiopian Airlines crash that occurred just five months later.

Both planes were 737 Max aircraft manufactured by Boeing, and had been fitted with a new flight maneuvering system known as MCAS. The rationale was that the MCAS system would make flying safer by detecting if planes were about to stall and forcing the nose of the aircraft down. However, Boeing had not informed either pilots or airlines about the new system, nor its potentially deadly faults.

In both crashes, sensors mounted on the exterior of the aircraft malfunctioned, incorrectly identifying a stall and forcing the planes towards the ground, as pilots desperately tried to override the MCAS system that they had not been trained to operate.

The Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes killed 346 people in total, and led to a series of “deals” with Boeing under which it paid various fines and compensation to victims’ families, including a $2.5 billion settlement in 2021.

However, after it was found that Boeing had misled the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) about the safety of its aircraft, possible criminal charges were discussed, with Boeing entering a plea deal in which it would plead guilty to federal fraud charges in 2024 – although the deal was subsequently rejected.

Now, the new deal has been announced that will allow Boeing to essentially pay its way out of any criminal sanctions, prompting the question of whether justice has been served.

What constitutes “justice” is highly subjective, depending on who is defining the term.

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Gavin Newsom Supports Medicaid Changes — Why Don’t Republicans?

To cut federal spending, Republicans should join Newsom in reforming Medicaid.

It says something about congressional Republicans’ unwillingness to reduce Medicaid spending when many of them stand well to the left of Gavin Newsom — I repeat, Gavin Newsom — on the subject. The California governor, a Democrat, recently put forward proposals that would reduce program spending and enrollment.

Newsom won’t win awards for courage when it comes to reforming Medicaid; an ongoing budget crisis, as opposed to policy principle, prompted his volte-face. But the problems in California speak to the larger dynamic Washington will face if it doesn’t get serious about curbing Medicaid’s problems.

Restrictions on Undocumented Immigrants’ Coverage

In his revised budget, Newsom proposed freezing enrollment for undocumented immigrants. Children would be permitted to join the state’s Medicaid program, but no more adults could enroll. Those adults who remain enrolled would face a $100 monthly premium, beginning in 2027.

The Medicaid expansion to those in the country illegally has remained a source of controversy. For starters, that program came in billions of dollars over budget earlier this spring, forcing Newsom’s office to seek emergency bailouts for the Medicaid program. That bailout came after Newsom used a legally questionable accounting scam to have Washington help fund this program — even though federal tax dollars generally do not cover Medicaid coverage for the undocumented. The reconciliation bill before Congress would prevent future use of this accounting loophole by states, saving an estimated $34.6 billion over ten years.

Given that Newsom helped expand California’s Medicaid coverage to the undocumented to begin with, let’s not kid ourselves that he acted out of deep-seated principle in proposing an enrollment freeze and premium charges. Instead, his state faces yet another cash crunch, and the governor was forced to react. Which could well describe what will happen in Washington once foreign governments get tired of financing our ever-increasing debt.

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Ex-Police Chief Serving Time for Rape and Murder Escapes Arkansas Prison Wearing Homemade Police Uniform

Former Gateway, Arkansas police chief Grant Hardin escaped from prison Saturday while serving a 50 and 30-year sentences for rape and first degree murder. According to authorities, Hardin wore a homemade police uniform to escape, wheeling supplies though the yard to fool guards.

Excerpt from the New York Post:

A disgraced ex-Arkansas police chief who was serving 80 years in prison for rape and a shotgun-to-the-head execution escaped from a high-security prison disguised as a cop.

Grant Hardin, 56, the former police chief of Gateway near the Arkansas-Missouri border, was seen on security cameras walking out of the North Central Unit prison, in Calico Rock, dressed in what appears to be a homemade law enforcement uniform on Sunday afternoon.

Hardin, who is considered extremely dangerous, used the outfit to sneak through the controlled gate while inconspicuously pushing a cart full of utility materials, according to the Stone County Sheriff’s Office.

…In 2017, Hardin pleaded guilty to the murder of James Appleton, 59, a Gateway water department employee who was shot in the head at point-blank range with a shotgun while on the phone with his brother-in-law, who was at the time the mayor.

…While incarcerated, Hardin’s DNA was tested and linked to a 1997 rape case that saw an elementary school teacher sexually assaulted at gunpoint inside a school bathroom while a community church service occured down the hall.

Hardin pleaded guilty to rape and kidnapping in 2018, with a judge sentencing him to an additional 50 years in jail.

Statement and updates by the Arkansas Department of Corrections, “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – CALICO ROCK – On Sunday, May 25, at approximately 3:40 p.m., inmate Grant Hardin, ADC #168541, escaped from the North Central Unit. Anyone with information about inmate Hardin’s whereabouts should contact local law enforcement immediately.”

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The Non-Existent Flu Cases of 2020

In 2020, the United States faced the shock of a new pandemic — but also a baffling medical mystery: the disappearance of the seasonal flu. While COVID-19 cases dominated headlines and hospital beds, flu diagnoses plummeted to “too low to estimate,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with later estimates at a mere 2000.

That’s not just a statistical anomaly — it’s a statistical impossibility. From an estimated 48 million cases in 2019–2020, the flu dropped to 2000 cases, statistically zero, in 2020–2021, amounting to a 99.999998% decrease — or put another way, a nearly 10 million percent drop. In the realm of infectious disease, that kind of disappearance doesn’t happen without a force far greater than a virus. In this case, that force may have been government incentives, diagnostic bias, and political opportunity.

Side-by-Side Comparison: Flu vs. COVID-19 (and Total Deaths)

Here is a year-by-year comparison of flu and COVID-19 cases in the U.S., alongside total recorded deaths from all causes:

YearFlu CasesCOVID-19 CasesTotal U.S. Deaths
2015–1624 millionN/A2.7 million
2016–1729 millionN/A2.7 million
2017–1845 millionN/A2.8 million
2018–1929 millionN/A2.8 million
2019–2048 millionN/A2.9 million
2020–212000~20 million3.4 million
2021–2211 million~35 million3.5 million
2022–2331 million~25 million3.3 million
2023–2440 million~15 million3.3 million

If mask mandates, social distancing, and lockdowns truly drove flu cases to extinction in 2020, why did COVID-19 — transmitted in much the same way — surge to 20 million cases that same year? It’s a paradox that challenges the public narrative.

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